ords. "I got about
that over the man. He fascinated me. I thought it was--more. So I
got engaged to him. He was a lot of things he oughtn't to be; my
people objected. Then, later, my father was ill--dying. He asked me
to break it off, and I did--he'd been father and mother both to me, you
see. But I still thought I cared. I hadn't seen the man much. My
father died, and then I heard about the man, that he had lost money and
been ill and that everybody was down on him; he drank, you know, and
got into trouble. So I just felt desperate; I felt it was my fault,
and that there was nobody to stand by him. I felt as if I could pull
him up and make his life over--pretty conceited of me, I expect--but I
felt that. So I wrote him a letter, six months ago, out of a blue sky,
and told him that if he wanted me still he could have me. And he did.
And then I went out to live with my uncle, and this man lives in that
town too, and I've seen him ever since, all the time. I know him now.
And--" Out of the dimness the clergyman felt, rather than saw, a smile
widen--child-like, sardonic--a curious, contagious smile, which
bewildered him, almost made him smile back. "You'll think me a pitiful
person," she went on, "and I am. But I--almost--hate him. I've
promised to marry him and I can't bear to have his fingers touch me."

In Geoffrey McBirney's short experience there had been nothing which
threw a light on what he should do with a situation of this sort. He
was keenly uncomfortable; he wished the rector had stayed at home. At
all events, silence was safe, so he was silent with all his might.

"When the doctors told me about my malady a month ago, the one light in
the blackness was that now I might break my engagement, and I hurried
to do it. But he wouldn't. He--" A sound came, half laugh, half sob.
"He's certainly faithful. But--I've got a lot of money. It's
frightful," she burst forth. "It's the crowning touch, to doubt even
his sincerity. And I may be wrong--he may care for me. He says so. I
think my heart has ossified first, and is finished, for it is quite
cold when he says so. I _can't_ marry him! So I might as well kill
myself," she concluded, in a casual tone, like a splash of cold water
on the hot intensity of the sentences before. And the man, listening,
realized that now he must say something. But what to say? His mind
seemed blank, or at best a muddle of protest. And the light-hearted
voice